Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday February 25, 2013 @09:45AM
from the can't-we-all-just-get-along? dept.

sfcrazy writes "Quite a lot of people raised their eyebrows the way ex-Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett made Microsoft the 'universal' control of any desktops PCs running with UEFI secure boot. Though the intentions of Garrett were clear — to enable GNU/Linux to be able to run Linux on Windows 8 certified PCs with secure boot; it was clearly putting Microsoft in a very powerful position. Linus, while a supporter of secure boot, exploded at Garrett and Howells when they proposed its inclusion in the kernel. Linus responded: 'Guys, this is not a d*#@-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It's trivial for you guys to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already wrote the code, for chissake, it's in that f*cking pull request.'"Update: 02/25 17:24 GMT by U L: The headline/article are misleading, since mjg seems to agree that the patch is a bit complicated : "(I mean, *I'm* fine with the idea that they're *@#$ing idiots and deserve to be miserable, but apparently there's people who think this is a vital part of a business model)". The issue at hand is a set of patches to load and store keys inside of a UEFI PE binary which is then passed to the kernel, which then extracts the keys from the binary. It's absurd, it's messy, and it's only needed because Microsoft will only sign PE binaries so not supporting it makes restricted boot even more difficult to support.

Argument, Torvalds, hands down. Ballmer just screams loudly, he can't actually form a logical, coherent argument or come up with any witty comebacks. Torvalds is no Cicero, but he can definitely tell someone how to fuck off.

However, Ballmer seems to be more prone to physical violence. Torvalds better learn how to duck. Or parry. Otherwise it might be a short fight.

I imagine that Torvalds would lose specifically because of the reason you state. He would probably just leave and therefore lose by default. Arguing with people who can't form a logical coherent argument is both frustrating and a huge waste of your time. You can't win an argument if the person you are arguing with refuses to change their opinion and doesn't even use logic and truths to back up their own opinions.

The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat, a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play along (and I commend him for it).

This is insightful? You are comparing apples to oranges. The organizations you mention are not competing with MS, they they build their products to run on Windows. They are not building an alternative to Windows. Microsoft benefits from those companies when they release a software product that runs on their OS platform.

MS is an OS vendor (with a few products thrown in for good measure, Office etc.), Linux is an OS and therefor is a competitor to Windows. Redhat is a Linux vendor and therefor an MS competitor. How did this fact escape both you and the moderators?

Good summary. A better way to do this is to a) make it easy for users to add keys, like a really obvious box on boot-up: "Do you really, really want to add keys for this new OS you are installing?" and b) have BIOS makers and main-board vendors include the keys for most Linux distros.

The problem with that is however that secure boot is broken as soon as a single OS maker/distro gets compromised. So while this is better, it still sucks badly, security-wise. "secure" boot is one of the ideas that looks good on first glance, but when you really get into the details it turns out to be fundamentally broken. Its only really reliable function is to make booting/installing anything but Windows harder and possibly infeasible for the average user. And, yes, that includes recovery CDs, utility CDs for restoring backups, hardware diagnostic CDs, etc. MS does not care that it screws over the user as long as their market-share increases. Plain old massively unethical business practices disguised as security feature.

Now for the real summary. For many, many reasons the ability to securely load and boot an OS with trust starting almost immediately on boot is desirable. This has been implemented as a secure boot facility that can, on x86 platforms, be disabled and which allows the user to install their own keys. It is an open solution.

For some reason, many OS vendors have decided to piggy back on Microsoft's signing infrastructure and now some guy put forth a shitty approach to doing this that Linus didn't like for technical reasons. There are non-shitty approaches to said solution, but Linux dweebs generally like to attribute all ills to Microsoft so somehow Microsoft (who doesn't even sell any significant number of computers) is at fault.

First of all, its not just ideological that he doesn't want such specific code in the Linux kernel. For the same reason he doesn't want to put tools/kvm in the kernel, its not germane to BEING A KERNEL so its NOT going into the kernel! read the mail yourself. Its like a government program, in that its likely to live forever, however, Linus wants Linux to outlast Microsoft AND RedHat and that code will become vestigial as soon as microsoft moves on to some other way to control hardware vendors. On the other hand, do servers need secure boot? NO, do tablets need secure boot? NO. So this is Linus admonishing developers for even SUGGESTING to include such a corner case in the code of the linux kernel.

As I understand it, it's about signing of drivers, e.g. nVidia drivers, and Redhat doesn't want to sign those, they want nVidia to get their drivers signed directly by Microsoft. And Microsoft will only sign windows EXE files, so this means that signed nVidia Linux drivers have to come in a Windows EXE file, which the kernel then needs to be able to verify the signature of, before loading the driver inside the EXE file.

Torvalds is in a tough key position in that one of his jobs is to keep the kernel "clean" and efficient.

There are almost certainly many more "vested interests" besides Microsoft that would like to see some special little chunk of code that directly addresses their "proprietary" needs inserted in the kernel. And if this is allowed, in the end we have the mess that is the Windows kernel.

Seriously, insert [any big corp] into the discussion instead of MS. Oracle comes to mind, and Red Hat was involved here as well...

Maybe Torvalds sounds like a "douche", but maybe people should know better than to foist dung disguised as kernel patches / additions at him?

The more I learn about the developers within the tight circle of the Linux kernel the more elite and prickish they sound. That doesn't mean they aren't talented and can do a good job it's just a different environment than one I'd ever want to work in. It's extremely hostile with many competitors (windows, apple) trying to get you to conform so they control you.

Linus is that grizzly old man in the log cabin who owns 20,000 acres of timber that the logging companies desperately want. Except he has a gun, and he never wears any pants.

And I speak for all of us when I say, I'm jealous of Linus's talent, success, and natural authority, but most of all, I hate his ability to cut through bullshit and put supercilious poseurs like me in their place.

Linux is great and all, but i am certainly not a fan of Linus anymore. Respect though for his incredible achievements.He's a dick the same way Jobs was (also sharing similar strengths regarding vision), and i now realize he basically is a real life Sheldon Cooper, ego humor and everything.

Someone needs to be a dick to make Linux continue to be successful. How big a dick is questionable, but look at HURD and Plan10... It's a design by committee process without as strong a leader, neither has made any actual progress towards being usable, and both have been around for 2 decades.

If you do not have a thick skin in this business you will get eaten up from the inside. I learned that the hard way. This is a business of egos, because this is first a business of Art and Art is ego. Yes, we wrap logic and algorithms around it, but the foundation is a creative process and that is tied to ego.

The question I have is what happens to Linux after Linus? If he is the Monarch, is there an heir or will Linux slowly begin to splinter without that strong Ego to guide its vision. Seems like the King does not want something added to "his" kernel, but had he disappeared just before his tirade, what would have happened?

maybe this goes into the deeper question of who (or what) defines the core of a Kernel. For Windows, iOS it seems to be decisions by committee and business need. For Linux? We say it is open source, but with His Holiness issuing colorful decrees, how open is it besides the obvious insurrection approach.

From what little I've garnered about the man, that was a fairly tame tirade, it does no impact on the progress of Linux and once I finally understood the issue I tended to agree with Linus's view, though with less passion.

My theory is that we all have a Stallman Point, a spot on the spectrum of the slide away from personal computing freedom where we just can't calmly stand around and watch folks push things further the wrong way. It looks to me like Linus just hit his with this "SecureBoot" crapola.

Sadly, everyone has a slightly different Stallman Point, and folks who haven't yet reached theirs look at someone getting upset and think "what an unreasonable person", while those who are long past theirs look at the same person and say "what a buffoon. If he'd only had this fit back at *my* Stallman Point we could have nipped this in the bud, but now its far too late".

Actually, his criticisms aren't about personal computing freedom and secureboot. His criticism is that crafting a PE executable for the express purposes of containing certificate data is utterly asinine. The correct response would be for MS to accomodate signing data in the more usual ways. I suspect a proposol to wrap the x509 data with a dummy ELF file would be met with similar rejection. The difference being no one would propose such a dumbass approach so we'd never find out, it's only thanks to MS dickishness that such a workaround would even be proposed.

Here's a thought. If having Microsoft being in charge of providing the key as to who gets to boot or not is such a good idea, then it would make just as much sense to have Apple be in charge of the key or even Redhat. Would Microsoft be willing to put Redhat in control of key signing into their kernel? Probably not. Then why should the linux kernel be subjected to Microsoft's control?

Torvalds is correct on this. It is unfortunate in the way he articulated it, because instead of reasoned argument, it comes across as a flaming rant.

Who should be holding the keys to their computer -- the user of the computer of course! But Microsoft doesn't think that way, they think that they should "own" the PC, and the user just uses it. Might as well be a corporate mainframe with millions of dumb terminals in that case, and that's what we are moving towards.

Look at the XBOX -- the new one -- It will have to be connected all the time to the internet, to "verify" every game you try to play. So, how long until your PC has to be connected to internet to "verify" your BIOS before it will even boot into an OS?

And Microsoft holding the keys? What happens if, 6 weeks after we've had this forced on us, MS goes out of business? Or is "bought" in some hostile takeover and then the one server verifying all those keys is removed from service (anyone remember MLB or Danger/Sidekick?)

We will all have to throw away our machines. And we can't even back them up to recover the data (forget about moving the HD to a new machine with no key'ed BIOS, MS has already seen to that with new DRMs in Win8).

If we hand MS the keys, MS could destroy the entire PC industry with one mistake. Which would destroy the economy. All those machines all over the world that hold so much data that runs our planet, pfft. And those servers won't be running Linux after all, because MS prevented that from loading years before this tragedy took place.

And the mistake wouldn't even have to be MS's fault. I mean, how hard would it be for the Chinese to hack their way into the keys and disable the whole thing?

I think a lot of folks here are missing the point. The trouble is that the kernel running in secure boot mode has to be able to receive signed keys in a secure way (if you think secure boot is worth anything, many do not).

Linux running in secure boot mode is a done deal. The question is how do you import keys that are signed by Microsoft. In an ideal world you'd just upload the signed X.509 cert and you'd be done. Unfortunately, Microsoft will only sign PE binaries.

So the developers opted to enclose the X.509 cert in a PE binary. Unfortunately, that means the kernel needs to be able to read the PE binary and verify the signature all in kernel space, then extract the x,509 cert. This is undeniably messy.

Now lots of folks will argue that there's no point to this and it should be done in user space. I'm not going ti argue with that, but the reality is that most of the mechanics of this are already implemented, just not the PE stuff. You can sign kernel modules and verify them in kernel space with x.509 certs (at least by my reading of the thread).

Frankly, I think this is pretty much the only thing to do short of talking MS into signing x509 certs. The other suggested work-arounds involve additional authorities or doing stuff in user space. They are all workable, but are pretty clumsy compared to what's being proposed.

I think it may have been a mistake to just drop this ugly change on Linus without his involvement. My guess is that if the problem had been stated before coming up with a proposed implementaon, they might have come up with essentially the same solution with less drama.

Given that Linux is running on everything from my phone to my sat-nav to (some of) my clients to (some of) my servers and just about every oddball bit of embedded hardware in my entire workplace, I don't think Linux is suffering much.

And what he's basically doing is telling MS, and MS sycophants, that he doesn't want an OS where MS has to "sign off" on any changes in the bootloaders, etc. to make sure they are "secure". It's like being told that all pensions in the world now have to be signed off by Robert Maxwell, who can revoke your ability to use yours (even if you're nothing to do with him) on a whim.

The day MS lets in a bit of code into their OS that lets Linus turn off any and all Windows machines he wants - whether on a whim or for a good reason - and that they have to run past him every time they want a change made, that's the day I'll let someone put MS-signed junk into a Linux kernel that I use.

Actually, his explicit concern is that it is a complete and total hack to create PE executables for the express purpose of being dumb containers for x509 certificate data.

MS already supports alternative signing schemes (e.g..PS1 scripts can have the ASN.1 content appended in Base64), so getting MS to support ASN.1 content without a PE executable seems like a much more sane solution for the problem Red Hat wants to 'solve'.

While others have already said 'this specific bit *IS* Microsoft's', I'll also say that UEFI is largely designed around MS conventions and requirements, just like BIOS specs were in the 1980s.

UEFI interfaces are defined in terms of Microsoft calling conventions and using a binary format defined by Microsoft. The behavior of the system clock is defined in terms of MS expectation of local timezone instead of GMT. All of these things are areas where MS has explicitly deviated from everyone else in the industry, and UEFI happens to follow MS on every last single deviation that presents itself.

At the core of UEFI, it's genesis was Intel trying to push an incompatible architecture (Itanium) and working closely with MS to assure there would be 'a' Windows running on it which was perceived to be the sole requirement to make the industry dump x86, even if it couldn't run x86 compiled applications. Thinks have evolved from there, but that relationship still defines most of what UEFI continues to be.

The "fix" seems to have included parsing PE binaries inside the linux kernel. That deserves getting shouted at. What you don't understand is that Linus doesn't care if more people adopt linux if it requires making the architecture smell bad.

The Linux kernel is not beholden to any business interest. Given the various user-space shenanigans (systemd, udev) over the past year, I'm not surprised by his response.

Trying to move user space items into the kernel that are not universally beneficial, or conversely trying to manipulate kernel space in ways that break long standing POSIX functionality - without a clear consensus from the community - is asking for it.

For all his faults, Linus has managed to keep the kernel relevant for a very large array of hardware in the face of these pressures.

Speaking from the small window of the world that I can see... tons. SuSE is the preferred distro for anything that VMWare puts out today since, you know, they own the distro. That means that all of the pre-built appliances for their management services and apps are built on SuSE. Beyond that it's the distribution that IBM uses on any strange architecture they decide to run linux on, for example Watson is SuSE running on Power. I figured it would have been AIX but I was wrong. Beyond that, I'm told that it's also the preferred internal architecture for SAP development and if they can suggest an OS to you for the app servers, that's what it is... although officially they are OS agnostic. I don't think you get near any of those things without a pretty big checkbook, so I'll go ahead and call them professional.

That is a bizarre world indeed. Since when does VMWare own SuSE? Last a heard they were bought from Novell by Attachmate, and I don't see where anything has changed there.

Someone needs to tell him that it's hard enough to get people to adopt your OS with 3 million competing distros, much less with the leadership of an egotistical ass who takes every opportunity to scream like bipolar child at anyone who tries to actually help.

Linux is a kernel. Not an OS.

The only thing Garrett was doing in this case was recognizing a problem going forward, and fixing it.

Attempting to make the Linux kernel dependent on Microsoft is exacerbating a problem.

He claims to love Linux, but what he really loves is himself. And every time it looks like Linux might achieve even a modicum of success, his overinflated ego is always there to ruin it.

Someone needs to tell him that it's hard enough to get people to adopt your OS with 3 million competing distros, much less with the leadership of an egotistical ass who takes every opportunity to scream like bipolar child at anyone who tries to actually help. The only thing Garrett was doing in this case was recognizing a problem going forward, and fixing it. And Torvalds tears his head off for it. He thinks everything has to be a big heroic stand--with him as hero, of course.

Well, if you read the mail conversation you'll know the majority of developers came out in agreeance with Linus and his views.on the matter. He has said he's tried being nicer, it just isn't him though. He is usual right though and when wrong accepts it. He is an extremely good maintainer regardless of peoples opinions on him.

This is an absurd troll. Linux IS Linux and he's free to do whatever he wishes in that regard. But, anyone with any understanding of the issue at all would clearly see that Linus is right. Microsoft has successfully leveraged it's monopoly status in the PC industry by implementing secure boot where they and they alone hold the keys to even BOOT a PC.

Implementing wedges or incorporating Microsoft's binaries into your code to boot your distribution is your option. But, expecting Linus to accept it into the kernel, when he has repeatedly made it clear that he will not incorporate non-free binaries, let alone this Microsoft root kit is asinine and ludicrous.

While Linus outbursts could make few pople nervous, I really start to hate such comments which are really aimed to get some mod points without saying anything true. But of course, everyone loves look for blame, so it works.

"He claims to love Linux, but what he really loves is himself. And every time it looks like Linux might achieve even a modicum of success, his overinflated ego is always there to ruin it."

I really hope that he loves himself, because that would mean he is healthy thinking person. That's actually requirement to survive this harsh world. If you loath yourself, then I really pitty you.

About rest of this paragraph - his outburst ruins any success, really? Either you are not fully informed or ignorant. You know what GPL means? That means that Ubuntu and Fedora can do as they want, as they release patches in public. They are not obliged to have it in mainline kernel - and neither Linus is obliged to support them. He maybe splits hair at first, but then he justifies his POV quite clearly. It's technical decision.

"Someone needs to tell him that it's hard enough to get people to adopt your OS with 3 million competing distros, much less with the leadership of an egotistical ass who takes every opportunity to scream like bipolar child at anyone who tries to actually help."

Wow, do you read lkml every day? I have done in recent past and Linus uses harsh language only in rarest cases. Also he has always been openly honest about what he thinks. It helps, because it cuts confusion down to minimum. If he doesn't like something, he says it openly. Trust me, it works. It's one of reasons why he still call the shots.

Also please cut it those cries about "3 million competing distros". First, there are maximum 4 major distros, supported by majority of open source and commercial software. There are fully standartised two packaging formats. Last I checked Windows has hundreds of different installers and packaging formats.

People don't use Linux not because of these things. They don't use it because it's not available in OEM form and they are afraid to use something different than their friends do.

Yep, it's simple, for these closed-source commercial offerings, the option of being able to close the source is valued more than features, especially hardware compatibility is not overly relevant, considering the fact that it has to run on a highly limited set of hardware.

Put bluntly, considering that the alternative is either Windows, which has bad license requirements for manufacturers, and is not exactly a high performance OS (just to illustrate, the Win7 here manages to slow down even a nice new SSD by over a magnitude in the filesystem code just copying small files on NTFS), and on the other hand you've got Linux that has license conditions that are not acceptable (or perceived so by the legal dept), and say some performance enhancements and quite a bit of hardware support that you don't need anyway,...

Hard choice, isn't it?

For a generic OS, I'll stick with Linux, because that's where all the advanced stuff is relevant.

Hardware donations do not come from vendors who use OpenSSH on parts of their stuff. They come from individuals. The hardware vendors who use OpenSSH on all of their products have given us a total of one laptop since we developed OpenSSH five years ago. And asking them for that laptop took a year. That was IBM.

Well, as soon as they can get over this ideological bullshit and act like professionals, then, maybe, the year of linux on the desktop might magically materialize.

I use Linux because I feel it is the best Free and Open environment. Note those ideological words? OK, sibling comment says that, but it doesn't say this: I feel it has become that because of the ideology, not in spite of it. I give a fuck if everyone else runs the same operating system I am. And in any case, Android is continuing to gain market share. I figure it's got the best chance right now to become Linux on the desktop, I'll just back it.

On the desktop there's consumer choice. And for most consumers free as in beer is less useful to them than ease of use and compatibility.

No one has ever proven or even credibly suggested that Windows or OSX is easier to use than Linux, especially Android. And there's compatibility and then there's compatibility. You can be compatible with Windows applications and this year's hardware, or you can be compatible with literally everything else. Linux supports vastly more hardware than does any Windows version. My house is peppered with hardware I bought used because Windows no longer offered drivers, nor the manufacturer. Scanners, printers, all manner of peripheral. People sell stuff because it doesn't work with their new Windows PC, and then I buy it and plug it into Linux and it works great.

On servers, free as in beer has turned out to be more important than ease of use, because computer operators can be expected to learn the accidental complexity.

If you can seriously sit there and tell me that Windows makes servers easier to use in the way that admins use servers, you know fuck-all about anything.

When I ask the question, "How do change the screen resolution?"Windows: Control PanelMac: System PreferencesLinux: It depends

Statistically nobody asks "how do I change the screen resolution on Linux". They ask "How do I change the screen resolution on Ubuntu", or "...redhat". (Most users of other Linuxes can figure this shit out for themselves.) You are reframing the question in a disingenuous manner. You may try again, but don't apologize to me unless you're going to apologize for your nonsense.

You are reframing the question in a disingenuous manner. You may try again, but don't apologize to me unless you're going to apologize for your nonsense.

In the world of mature adults, documentation and backwards compatibility are the most essential parts to platform success. As a software vendor, if I have the choice of including Linux and having to write documentation and deal with bugs for dozens of distros or ignore the platform entirely, which business case do you think wins out? Keep in mind that end-user desktop Linux usage is the equivalent of a statistical error. Also keep in mind that I'm not talking about end user training alone. I'm talking about training the support staff that deals with end user support, automating testing suites for usability and bug tracking, unit testing, how to pass software updates, how to maintain backwards compatibility between distro upgrades... the Linux desktop ecosystem is a sea of poorly documented unknowns. That's just the reality.

At this point there isn't even a sane way to come up with use cases for desktops that will work between Ubuntu 12.04 and 11.04, or between Xubuntu and Kubuntu and Lubuntu. What happens when you make the move from Debian to Centos to Slackware to Arch to Mint to SuSE?

The excuses ideological die hards make are pathetic, and they have been for the fifteen years I have been a Linux user and hearing about the age of the Linux Desktop. Despite all the noise, the situation remains exactly the same: come up with a standardized interface for the Linux Desktop -- including all the software tools to test, update, and maintain software across the vast majority of Linux platforms -- or continue to lose. Those are the two choices.

If you want that success for the Linux desktop, you need to push for standards and quit making excuses.

In fairness to your point, it's not just the Linux kernel. Linux distro package management is light years ahead of what Windows and even OS X have (yes: I use, love, and contribute to homebrew). Also, I develop software that runs on Linux servers and some of it is barely above kernel level. Running Linux means that I can test a lot of my work more quickly than if I had to deploy it to a development server after every save. But more than that, I genuinely love Linux. It's been good to me and I enjoy using it.

Still, I strongly prefer the OS X desktop. It's not from lack of trying the various FOSS offerings. I started off on Windowmaker and Enlightenment, then worked my way through the various Gnome epochs, KDE 2/3/4, a few tiling WMs (I wrote the semi-official Qtile-on-Ubuntu guide a couple of years ago), LXDE, and several others I'm sure I've forgotten along the way. OS X seems to be what Gnome tried and failed to achieve: a nice-looking, comfortable desktop without a million config knobs that most people can use out of the box. As much as I like Linux-the-OS, I like using OS-X-the-Desktop.

Morally bankrupt? It's a fucking OS. Get a grip. There's ideology, then there's zealotry. When you start talking about morals in the choice of as mundane a product as an OS, you've crossed the line into zealotry.

This isn't "ideological bs" any more. In order to BOOT AND RUN Linux on newer Hardware "sold for Windows 8" you must have a signed bios loader. Red Hat COULD have petitioned for their OWN code to be used, but instead "rent" a key from Microsoft.

Pnce the old stock flushes, We are just a few month away from EVERY MOTHERBOARD SOLD to require Microsoft's PERMISSION to boot another OS. Not just Dells or HPs pre-configured, but companies are now pushed to sell only "Windows Motherboards" whether you decide to buy Windows or not!

Even APPLE hardware isn't locked down THAT tightly. We've already had cases where the ol' "API works for Windows" bit not the signed Microsoft alternate-OS key... Out of Samsung notebooks.

We are back to 1999 and using obscure bugs in the "open" hardware to lock Alternate OSes out of the hardware market... For good. Hope you like Rasperry Pi because niche, custom hardware is the only stuff that will FREELY run Linux from this point on.

Is Torvalds right? In this case, probably. There isn't a reason to include this functionality in the base kernel. If it is useful to RedHat, then RedHat can include it in their distribution. But publicly attacking someone, especially someone working for a company which is largely responsible for making Linux "respectable" isn't doing himself, the project, or the community at large any good, any more than Ballmer throwing chairs and screaming "Developers" or the "Howard Dean Scream" helped Microsoft or Howard Dean.

So because Redhat have made Linux respectable for business use that this should add weight to their proposals and get them special treatment if they make a brain dead suggestion? Linus is very brunt and forthright in his dealings, it saves time, there's no doubting his position. Sadly I wish I worked with more people like this rather than ones that talk around ideas and suggestions instead of being decisive.

Self censorship is a huge problem throughout organisations with people not being sure enough of themselves to say what they mean or think instead they couch replies in vague terms so as not to offend and hope for some sort of consensus. This invariably leads to sub-optimal solutions but allows people to escape any resultant blame due to the shared nature of the final decision process. I'd rather stick my neck out and say things as I see them. If I'm wrong on something tell me why and I'll take it onboard, however we should get a good solution rather than a half-assed one.

The explosion serves two purposes; firstly it puts an immediate block on this particular action, secondly its memorable and noticeable enough so as to dissuade future proposals of a similar nature thus saving time.

Thanks for the pointer to Eric S Raymond. I only knew of his from The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I had no idea he was a right wing nut, global warming and HIV denier, Bush jr supporter, islamophobic war-monger, homophobic, racist troll.

Honestly, when dealing with someone who is managing a large project, it is way better to have someone appear rude but be very frank and transparent on where they stand. It's way, WAY more difficult dealing with folks from either families or heritages which keep them silent about things they don't like until you suddenly have to redo half of a project because they didn't speak out, or chastize someone in a way that was necessary to keep the problem from festering.

He is right and has little patience for stupidity. Furthermore he doesn't need to be nice. So he isn't.

I have found that Linus is willing to make very forceful, negative statements about technology that he is unfamiliar with.

For example, in an email list discussion, he made these kinds of disparaging statements about technology that I work with, describing particular aspects of how the technology work. Unfortunately, his statements were all wrong. I called him on it (in off-list email). He responded indicating that he wasn't interested in the technology and had not looked at it in years.

It's OK that he isn't interested in it, but that doesn't give him the right to make up stuff about how it works.

And, because I have observed this with topics that I am familiar with, I am less likely to believe him on topics that I am less familiar.